What went wrong? Is it the game or the grenre?

[Zfz]

spend a 5hr play session on one day to mark off one inch of progress towards what you are doing

And therein lies the problem. The game is designed so people feel they're working towards something. They feel it's like climbing stairs and at the top of the stair case lies the fruits of their labour. Hence people want that climb to be over quickly.

Now destroy that staircase. Make that a path filled with enjoyable experiences all the time. That means making the leveling experience what the end-game experience is today. Make the expedition into Sastasha feel and play like we're tackling the Binding Coils. Now instead of wanting that leveling time to be over quickly, instead of feeling you have to spend that 5 hours as a price of getting what you want, you are already getting it, while at the same time progressing towards more of it.

All this focus on end-game make us forget that "end-game" really was only born out of a desire to have more of that "game". It's the "one more turn". Turn 1 to turn 500 ("the game") is the foundation, turn 500 and after (the "end-game") is only desirable because people enjoyed the foundation upon which the extra turns are built.

Nobody is saying we should simply make it take 3 times longer to level. Not at all.

[ApolloGenX]

All this focus on end-game make us forget that "end-game" really was only born out of a desire to have more of that "game". It's the "one more turn". Turn 1 to turn 500 ("the game") is the foundation, turn 500 and after (the "end-game") is only desirable because people enjoyed the foundation upon which the extra turns are built.

Nobody is saying we should simply make it take 3 times longer to level. Not at all.

This is evidenced by the playstyle that EQ had... even high end players spent lots of in game time grinding (socializing in parties) for AAs. The end game gear made that a bit easier... and while we raided most nights... most days we were just sitting in groups exping AAs. You wanted to get to max level to be part of that end game community- not because there was a tangible "finish line" of BiS. In fact, there was no illusion of ever being done... it was all about just making the social groups easier.

[Nadrojj]

I get a huge sense of accomplishment when I got my full Acolyte, Mages Gear it was amazing, and then i got my Cavalry Set which was super awesome and now i'm working on my infantry set!

Those are good...and about the closest thing to NM's out there...the only difference is you'll get one of these items almost guaranteed every run, granted it might be the same item, but then again it might not.

And Emperor's Hairpin was useful for so many level's...and those level's took soooooooo much more time.

But I don't mind my gear is only useful for like 5 level's...I will wait for the silly Vanity system and use it then I enjoy the endless grind for this gear so much more ( more like the reward than the grind )

No piece of gear that I've obtained in this game has given me the man that was worth all the hard work I put in for it. Your full sets of gear prob took an hour or two of running the same instance, then worn for three or four levels then replaced. There is no longevity to the items you listed. Emperor's Hairpin for example, I got the drop on my theif, kept it and wore it on my ninja and ranger. A piece I'd never sell, was proud to wear and could be worn by pretty much all of my jobs. This game lacks rare items, and that's a shame.

[AjoraOak]

I quit around the point where I could pug turn 1-4 every week, addons would have been really nice but I think they lied about it at this point.

To add to the issues, gear came down to "I love how that gear I got totally let me get 3 more dex, worth every bit of time I spent." /not.

[indira]

lazy & scared designers went wrong with the genre.
they copy the money maker then wonder why its not making the same money. well if its been done already no one cares anymore.

all gear is trash gear in this game.

[MikoteAstra]

I created my owen company with my friends be for patch 2.1 and we managed to get few great and nice people, we are total of 22 in the company. Now is only me and 3 other players.


Here are the major reason why they left.

1. We all like to craft, but there is no point the market in our server is crashed, or better to say there is no market.

-You put big effort to gather matirials and craft items but for what, in the end you have to sell them for 35gills or 120gills, this is so demotivating and waste of time. One big point of a MMO is the market, to see your hard work how it pays off and with it you may affored something for witch you desire and get it.And instead SE to save the market what do they do....they put NPCs in witch you can buy matirials lvl 30 and above.......siriosly, i spent mounts to develop my charcter and gather matirials so that in the end you put NPCs where all can buy those matirials !!!!!!

2. There is no Open World content.

- This is supposed to be an Open World in witch you can do meany things with your friends and other people. But right now this is a DN World you sit and wait to go in it.
- A lot of people including me, have created Threads or Posts with ideas, witch are great and simple to do for an open world content. No response from the SE team about Open World content.

3.The Housing fiasco. That we are locked from this content in a game for witch we pay 12 euros fee.

-For most of us this is a big deal believe it or not. How to put it the house in the game is for us like the real home, apartment, house in our real world. We wanted to make our homes, craft the things witch we needed gather the matirials, and do all this together.Now we cant do it, and why you aske, because SE cant keep up with the demand of the housing content and they cant handle RMT and Bots in their OWN Game !!!!!!!!!!!


4. The stupid vote kick system !

- The people witch are abusing it are now FAR FAR a lot more then the people witch were AFK-ing back then. And what about the Withdraw madness too.


5. The conection issue witch a lot of us still got when we fight.

- Again we pay you money so that we dont get such problems, like hell i personaly never got such problems in Free to Play MMOs.



Patch 2.2 by the look of it is even worse it brings nothing new excepet more quests, i have enough of more armors and more dns, we got for now planty of them.

[mythicrose]

To be fair, Panda....this has been around even in the height of World of Warcraft's glory days. People got max rank, got their gear, went through the week's raid, then had little to nothing else to do the rest of the time. The main difference is that weren't as many MMOs to swap between. Your choice was the less grindy WoW or going to a grindy MMO such as FXI, UO, EQ, EQ2, SWG.

Most just stayed put in WoW. WoW is an anomaly. Could even Blizzard replicate that MMO's success? I highly doubt it. It took elements from previous MMOs (as each successive one does) but was the first to make the level up grind less tedious. No exp death on death. No full body looting pvp. Nothing but an insignificant walk to your corpse and slight stat debuff.

I'm not knocking WoW. The above conditions appealed to a much broader player base that didn't want (or have) 6+ hours to get any form of progression on their character. The one game I felt had the leveling process was great was SWTOR. Unfortunately, it didn't having "everything" in place for the "end game" crowd. I can't imagine how difficult it is for subsequent MMOs to compete to games that have years and years of content added.


If WoW launched in today's market with the expectations of today's MMO gamers, I highly doubt it would be doing any better than FXIV. Players demend more content than can be reasonabley created in MMOs now. Investors are also pushing games in to the market before they are ready. This causes games to be incomplete, lack content, etc. (Warhammer Online as an example of that). Realm Reborn has it's issues, but changes to slow leveling, making crafting worthwhile, exploration worth while, etc would have to fall to an expansion at this point. Even that has issues....if the expansion leveling/dungeon/raid/pvp/crafting is consumed too quickly you're back to current issue. If it's too slow you bleed players from boredom as well.

[Dyvid]

What went wrong? Is it the game or the genre?

Player > Genre > Game in that order.

I find the this post and replies actually funny. FFXIV:ARR is not the first version of this game. In fact SE defied conventionally wisdom and launched a game the minority say they want, a sandbox. It bombed badly. The reality is SE tried it your way and it didn't work.

[mikoto_qc]

Does that mean that Yoshi.P have failed? Or just succeed to make fast Cash in SE Pocket?

I have start playing this game durng V1. around patch 1.19 and right now i can tell you that i liked the V1 from that point till it got closed. Yes content was frustrating in some way. The lag was way more painful then right now. But still the core of the game was great. Took me week and week to get my Craft lvl to 50. not 1-2 dyas. I think if Yoshi and his team have kept the Core of V1 and changed what didnt worked well(such as the area copy-paste, lag) at the end it would have been a great game. Skyrmish was fun, Hamlet defense in some way was fun and different, low drop rate give me reason to keep doing the content in place, the econmy and craft has it reason to exist.

and all this v

Usually I like to craft, but there seems little use for it in this game. I love housing... we know how that has gone so far.
The world is very closed, corridored, or however you wish to put it.
Coil lockout is frustrating and unsatisfying.
Loot tier system doesn't make sense to me. Why do we get tokens for i90 gear in i50 dungeons?
Leveling is WAY too fast.

[Welsper59]

1. We all like to craft, but there is no point the market in our server is crashed, or better to say there is no market.

-You put big effort to gather matirials and craft items but for what, in the end you have to sell them for 35gills or 120gills, this is so demotivating and waste of time. One big point of a MMO is the market, to see your hard work how it pays off and with it you may affored something for witch you desire and get it.And instead SE to save the market what do they do....they put NPCs in witch you can buy matirials lvl 30 and above.......siriosly, i spent mounts to develop my charcter and gather matirials so that in the end you put NPCs where all can buy those matirials !!!!!!

2. There is no Open World content.

- This is supposed to be an Open World in witch you can do meany things with your friends and other people. But right now this is a DN World you sit and wait to go in it.
- A lot of people including me, have created Threads or Posts with ideas, witch are great and simple to do for an open world content. No response from the SE team about Open World content.

3.The Housing fiasco. That we are locked from this content in a game for witch we pay 12 euros fee.

-For most of us this is a big deal believe it or not. How to put it the house in the game is for us like the real home, apartment, house in our real world. We wanted to make our homes, craft the things witch we needed gather the matirials, and do all this together.Now we cant do it, and why you aske, because SE cant keep up with the demand of the housing content and they cant handle RMT and Bots in their OWN Game !!!!!!!!!!!


4. The stupid vote kick system !

- The people witch are abusing it are now FAR FAR a lot more then the people witch were AFK-ing back then. And what about the Withdraw madness too.


5. The conection issue witch a lot of us still got when we fight.

- Again we pay you money so that we dont get such problems, like hell i personaly never got such problems in Free to Play MMOs.

1) Extremely exaggerated. It doesn't matter what server you're on, there is a market. You just won't make millions from a single piece of crafted gear. You will however find a steady stream of income (anywhere from 1-20k or more per sale) for crafted or gathering mats if you know what to make. Just like RL, making gil in this games economy is not a matter of "I reached max level so I should get a billion gil for nothing", you need to find what sells. Stock and demand. It requires a marginal level of thought.

2) Agreed. Open world content is severely lacking in this game. Content creators need to understand that "content" does not just mean something for endgame purpose.

3) Wrong perspective. You, and sooooooo many others, are looking at FC housing as personal housing. It's a group effort. If I had at least 10 other people making gil at the rate I do when I try to, I guarantee that I could afford a medium FC house relatively quick (within 1-2 months of ~10hrs a week of playtime). FC houses are long term goals for A GROUP OF PLAYERS, not an individual player. If your FC has 50 people actively playing, but no one is contributing except only 5 people (that are putting in below average effort in getting a medium/large house), you're gonna be spending quite a long time getting there.

4) Agreed, but it's the players you need to blame on that. SE could shutdown the entire game and blame it on the playerbase for abusing things that shouldn't be abused. They would be 100% correct about it too. They're just not that irrational, thankfully.

5) Connection issues are indeed a fault on their end, in most cases. They didn't plan for so many people to be playing. As a result, they only prepared servers to handle what seems to be less than 50k players worldwide. I recently upgraded my connection speed and I no longer have any lag problems. I honestly despise the monopolization by American ISPs but they're the only real option available to us currently.